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Municipal Residency Enforcement Sought

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WAMC
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Minority community leaders in Springfield Massachusetts have endorsed a new push by several city councilors to enforce a residency requirement for city employees

            The head of the Greater Springfield Chapter of the NAACP Rev. Talbert Swan says the long standing practice of granting waivers to the  residency rule has shut the door to city employment for  qualified blacks and Hispanics.

Swan and Carlos Gonzales, President of the Latino Chamber of Commerce announced their support for City Council President James Ferrera’s plan  to use the city budget as leverage in the residency dispute.   Thousands of city employees, including teachers, police and firemen are exempt from residency requirements either because of union contracts, or state law.

Paul Tuthill is WAMC’s Pioneer Valley Bureau Chief. He’s been covering news, everything from politics and government corruption to natural disasters and the arts, in western Massachusetts since 2007. Before joining WAMC, Paul was a reporter and anchor at WRKO in Boston. He was news director for more than a decade at WTAG in Worcester. Paul has won more than two dozen Associated Press Broadcast Awards. He won an Edward R. Murrow award for reporting on veterans’ healthcare for WAMC in 2011. Born and raised in western New York, Paul did his first radio reporting while he was a student at the University of Rochester.